An individual participating in a community may be interested in tracking their status in the community. Specifically, an individual may be interested in tracking his contributions and standing in a community. For example, an individual participating in a particular industry may wish to track their contributions and/or reputation in that particular industry.
Typically, an individual may track his contributions to a community manually in a biography (e.g., resume, curriculum vitae, etc.). More specifically, in the case of a resume, the individual may track the individual's professional history, published papers, or other contributions in the community. The resume can then be used by the individual to participate in the community (e.g., apply for jobs, provide support for published papers, etc.).
With the advent of online communities, an individual may also be interested in tracking their status in an online community. For example, an individual's status in a blog may be determined based on the individual's date of registration, the number of views of the blog, and the number of blog entries. Typically, an individual's status in an online community is made available to participants of the same online community. In this case, participants in the online community may consider the individual's status when interacting with the online community. For example, participants may decide to frequent a blog of an individual with a positive status in the online community.